Dear Amy: I am a funny, intelligent woman in my mid-40s. I was married a long time ago, and I have a wonderful daughter. Now that she is bound for college, I would like to find a meaningful relationship. Every man I meet seems more impressed by my career than by my heart. What can I do? — Confused.

Dear Confused: Men are hopeless! I suggest you give up entirely. Focus on something completely different. Write a book or renovate your house instead.

THOUGH that may not have been the advice she would have given herself, it is nonetheless the path that led Amy Dickinson, who writes the syndicated Ask Amy column for The Chicago Tribune, to find the love of her life.

Ms. Dickinson, now 48, grew up on a dairy farm in the Finger Lakes town of Freeville, N.Y., population 505. Her family’s roots there date back two centuries.

Growing up, she realized that her classmates divided themselves into two groups: those who wanted to stay and those who wanted to leave. She knew the group to which she belonged. “I would sit on a hay bale and pretend I was on ‘Johnny Carson,’ ” she said. “I had dreams.”

Bruno Schickel, the brother of her friend Jacques, was in the other group. He was four years older than her and fierce. He was already a young man hard at work on the family farm, barking orders when he found younger siblings whiling away their time swimming in the pond. “He was a little frightening,” Ms. Dickinson said.

But the young Amy caught his eye back then. “She was as cute as a button,” said Mr. Schickel, belying his gruff demeanor.

After high school, Ms. Dickinson left for Georgetown University, began her career as a journalist, married and had a daughter, Emily Mason, now 19. The marriage fell apart when Emily was a toddler, but Ms. Dickinson used her experiences as a single parent as fodder for a column in Time magazine.

In 2003, The Tribune chose her to write the successor to the long-running Ann Landers column, catapulting Ms. Dickinson into celebrity status. She also became is a frequent panelist on the National Public Radio quiz show “Wait, Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!”

After a few unsuccessful attempts at dating in Chicago, she had given up. “The kind of men who were interested in me, I did not find interesting at all,” she said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Schickel stayed near home and became a successful builder. Several family members are architects, and Bruno’s great-grandfather William Schickel designed many buildings in New York City, including the landmark St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue.

Bruno Schickel married and had four daughters, Caitlin Schickel, 19; Angela Martinez, 18, who was adopted from the Dominican Republic; Michaela Schickel, 17, and Avila Schickel, 11, who was adopted from China.

He was still smarting over his failed marriage when Ms. Dickinson returned last summer to write a book and take care of her elderly mother. “I would see him here and there, and I thought he was very handsome,” Ms. Dickinson said.

Photo

Credit
Jonathan Cohen for The New York Times

By all appearances, Mr. Schickel was not interested. When Ms. Dickinson visited his family’s house, he frequently left the room. “His family was very curious about my book,” Ms. Dickinson said. “They would say, ‘How much money are you making, Amy?’ And later I learned that he was appalled that they were asking so many questions.”

Meanwhile, Ms. Dickinson was considering adding on to her tiny home and invited Bruno over to take a look. Her house did not hold his interest. “She has the most incredible brown eyes,” Mr. Schickel said.

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He discouraged her from renovating her house. “I thought, ‘Why does she want to renovate when she’s going to move in with me?’ ” he said.

The two fell into deep conversation, which continued over coffee. “We were absolutely in love right from the start,” Ms. Dickinson said.

Like teenagers, they could not contain news of the romance. Mr. Schickel began calling his family and friends to tell them. He told clients. “He even called a cousin in Germany,” Ms. Dickinson said.

Once, when Ms. Mason was visiting home during Christmas break, Ms. Dickinson took her to one of Mr. Schickel’s job sites. “We sort of did a drive-by stalking,” Ms. Dickinson said. “I just wanted to see him, but then I lost my nerve at the last minute and started to drive away.”

Ms. Dickinson and Mr. Schickel cruised around town and countryside in his red pickup. “Long, long drives through the landscape of our shared childhoods,” she said. Those places included the skating ponds and the sledding hills they loved as children.

“We never once went to the movies — one of my favorite things to do — and had very few ‘datey’ dates,” Ms. Dickinson said. “This was a romance that seemed to happen outside.”

As their relationship progressed through the fall and winter, Ms. Dickinson said, she began to feel something that was terrifying to her. “I wanted to get married,” she said.

It was something she had not felt in the last 17 years of being single. “I’m an advice columnist, and I see how people do marriage and I see how badly they do marriage,” she said.

She kept those thoughts to herself until March, when the couple visited New York. As they walked by the church designed by Mr. Schickel’s great-grandfather, he asked where she saw the relationship going. “She was silent for about a minute — completely silent,” Mr. Schickel said. “Then she said: ‘I’m sorry. I want to get married.’ ”

Mr. Schickel needed no apology. He proposed on the spot.

On Aug. 16, the Rev. Roger Smith, a United Methodist minister and a cousin of the bride, performed their ceremony in a tiny chapel a few miles from their farms. The bouquets of zinnias and larkspur were from the gardens of several Freeville women. The couple’s five daughters stood in attendance, their dresses as different and beautiful as the late-summer blooms brightening the church.

Later, in the receiving line, Ms. Dickinson jumped up and down, clapping her hands as she greeted their 185 guests. “We did it!” she exclaimed several times.